Michigan

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Sarah Moore Kuschell | Bay City TimesThe Bay City State Recreation Area Beach is shown from the air in May. Despite having far more beaches than any other Great Lakes state, Michigan has to scrape by with equal amounts of funding for water bacteria testing.

Michigan has 3,224 miles of shoreline and receives about $280,000 in funding through the federal BEACH Act. The Virgin Islands has 175 miles and nets more than $300,000 to monitor its beaches.

Closer to home, there's a comparison that Bay County leaders say they can't overlook.

Indiana, with 45 miles of shoreline, gets more than $200,000 a year, while Bay County, with the same coastal frontage or more, receives about $7,000 to test its public beaches for E. coli bacteria.

Bay County leaders say those are funding inequities they hope to see addressed with the federal legislation, known as the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health Act of 2000, up for reauthorization right now.

"Saginaw Bay isn't just some little lake somewhere," said Joel Strasz, public health services manager for the county Health Department. "It's part of a major watershed in the United States. And when you take a look at the level of funding that other communities have, it should be recognized."

Legislation working its way through Congress calls for raising BEACH Act funding from $30 million to $40 million and extending the act to 2012.

Shannon Briggs, a toxicologist with the state Department of Environmental Quality, said she fears the current allocations for Michigan beaches aren't meeting the state's needs, and comparatively to other states, it's "frustrating" to see the disparities.

"Some of the other states are able to monitor beaches five times a week," she said. "And then Michigan is monitoring a portion of our Great Lakes beaches only once a week during a portion of the summer."

Michigan is monitoring 212 of its 905 beaches along the Great Lakes with BEACH Act funding. That's only 23 percent - by far the lowest percentage of all states on the Great Lakes. New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania are able to monitor 100 percent; Indiana, 83 percent; Illinois, 78 percent; Wisconsin, 64 percent.

The Governmental Accountability Office has submitted a 66-page report to Congress stating that there's room for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to improve public health.

The report found that the formula the EPA has used to allocate $51 million in BEACH Act grants from 2001-2006 "does not accurately reflect the monitoring needs of the states" and "this occurs because the formula emphasizes the length of the beach season more than the other factors in the formula - beach miles and beach use."

Briggs, who coordinates the state's beach monitoring program, said Michigan will be able to monitor even fewer beaches with proposed amendments to the BEACH Act. The proposed changes call for stricter requirements for beach monitoring - requiring counties to switch to "rapid testing" methods that produce water quality results within two hours after taking samples.

Current methods of testing for E. coli produce results within 18 to 24 hours, only telling you what the water quality was yesterday.

"It's good that the congressmen are looking at new technologies and better ways to improve monitoring," Briggs said. "However, with the amount of funding Michigan continues to get, it's going to be almost impossible for us to meet those new technology requirements."

Briggs said it costs about $60 right now to do one set of three tests for E. coli, and it would cost about $210 to do rapid testing in two hours.

"That's really going to put a crimp on how many beaches we're going to be able to test," said Strasz of Bay County, who says there is no standard for rapid testing right now and many uncertainties about what constitutes a safe reading under those methods.

Strasz said there is one test method called "quantitative polymerase chain reaction," which uses Entercocci as an indicator of bacteria, rather than E. coli, and can produce results in two hours.

Strasz said he's been in contact with the U.S. Geological Survey about putting together an algorithm for predicting water quality, and Bay County may find itself someday getting into "beach forecasting."

Strasz said it still requires sampling, but also takes a look at factors such as weather patterns, wave height, turbidity, wind direction and rainfall.

"We need to start looking at beaches the same way we look at weather," he said. "We need to know when it's going to be a safe day at the beach and when it's going to be not a safe day at the beach."

Bay County was one of 11 communities in the state to take part in a special beach survey this summer. The county had about $11,000 in extra funding to take samples three times a week - instead of the usual once a week - at four beaches: Wenona, Brissette, South Linwood and the Bay City State Recreation Area.

Strasz said because of optimum weather conditions, none of the E. coli readings were high enough to trigger a beach closure or advisory. But he said the Health Department learned that sunny, dry weather results in lower levels of bacteria, and it's largely when it rains that water quality becomes a concern.

Brigg said current BEACH Act funds, coupled with state funds, are enough for most county health departments to simply "get something started." With more funding, she said, health departments could expand their programs beyond doing a bare minimum of surveying to include pollution source identification and remediation.